Stepping Stones | Week 2 | Pastor Micah Sutton | Five Lakes Church

We're in the series, stepping stones.

And, uh, and then this series, we're talking about intentionally going somewhere because in stepping stones do exactly that they intentionally lead to an end result.

When you set up stepping stones in your yard, you don't just stand somewhere with a stone in your hand and throw it up in the air and wherever it lands, that's where you step.

No, you, you plot it out and say, I'm wanting to go from here to there.

I'm wanting to get from this point to that destination.

And so you lay out the stepping stones in accordance to where you're trying to go.

And when God is laying out the stepping stones for Israel, he's saying, I have a place that you're starting.

You're starting in a place.

That's not with me.

You're starting in a place where you're slaves.

You're starting a place where you're bound.

You're starting in a place where things are not optimal in your life.

And I'm taking you to a place where you are a free nation, where you are my people, where you have a land that is yours.

You're going from here to there.

But I'm going to give you some stepping stones along the way that if you step in these places, it's going to lead.

You guaranteed lead you to this end result.

And he called them the 10 commandments.

We're calling them the 10 stepping stones.

If you will, they were carved in stone and given to Israel to take them to a pre a predetermined end result your present location, wherever you're at in life right now, wherever you're at in a relationship right now in business right now, wherever you're at financially right now, wherever you're at right now, you did not just arrive there, in there you were, no.

There was some steps that were taken from wherever you were to wherever you are good or bad.

You took some steps to get to where you are.

You've had stepping stones, places where you let your Heartland, your, your feet rest places where your mind went before you went.

And sometimes places where your mind didn't really go.

You just kind of showed up.

I'm the only one who's ever done that apparently week.

Number one, we said the first step to eternal success is worshiping only God.

The stepping stones of God is one God worship.

Only me.

He said, stepping stone, number two, don't create any images or idols to represent me.

Don't try to put me in a box of your understanding.

Let me be God and allow me to define myself in your world because you can't define me.

And today I want to talk about the next two commandments.

The Bible says in Exodus chapter 20 verse seven, it says you shall not take the name of the Lord.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

Your God in vain for the Lord will not hold him.

Guiltless.

Who takes his name in vain?

He's saying, don't use my name foolishly.

Don't use it without being intentional.

Don't use it recklessly.

Don't use it for without purpose.

And then he saying, there is a, there is a negative impact in your life if you do.

So.

That's exactly what he's saying there.

Verse eight says, remember the Sabbath day to keep it.

Holy six days, you shall labor.

Now he's saying the Sabbath day, the seventh day.

And he is now going to explain what he means by this six days, you shall labor and do all your work.

But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord.

Your God in it, you shall do no work.

You nor your son or your daughter, nor your male servant or your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger, who is within your gates.

So it's kind of interesting.

God says, I want you to do no work on the Sabbath day on the seventh day.

And yet he knows you.

He knows me.

He knows humanity.

And he says, you know what?

They're going to do.

They're going to say, oh, I'm not doing any work, but my servant's doing some work.

I'm not doing any work, but I'm going to tell my daughter to do some work or my son to do some work.

I'm not doing any work, but I'm going to let my, I'm going to have my ox, do some work on my donkeys, do some work.

And so I'm not really doing any work.

He said, they're going to try to find the caveat to the rule.

They're going to find the loophole in this.

And so he spends an entire verse saying, not this person, not this person, not that animal, not that animal, nobody, not even the stranger, because what if a stranger walks into town, we can get them to do some work.

Nobody works on the Sabbath day for in six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it hallowed.

It means he made it holy unto himself.

He said this this day means something to me.

Okay?

So the first commandments, they're the stepping stones established a commitment to God.

And this set of stepping stones we're talking about today.

They deepened our relationship with God.

God says, I'm going to require that you take your relationship with me seriously.

That is not just by happenstance.

It is not just something that is easy peasy.

It is going to, it needs to mean something to you.

It needs to matter.

Treat it with respect.

And that's something that's interesting to me today because in our world and our culture, respect is very hard to gain, easy to lose and is not given.

Respect is not something that is, you can see on a daily basis today.

Uh, in, in stores, I see kids disrespecting their parents.

I see parents disrespecting him, store employees.

I see store employees, disrespecting customers.

I see, I hear people disrespecting their employers and employers disrespecting their employees.

Respect is not something that is ubiquitous in our day in age.

And then we could go on and on about that.

But God says, no.

I want you to respect my relationship, your relationship that you have with me.

He said, I alone am God.

And I'm offering you a relationship.

And so you do not deserve this relationship.

You cannot earn this relationship.

You certainly cannot demand this relationship.

And so I want you to respect the relationship.

And that brings us to our big idea of what he's saying in these two steppingstones.

These two commandments is guard your relationship with God, guard your relationship with God.

Now, when I used the word guard there, it means to watch over and protect, but do not misunderstand.

God does not need you to stand guard over him.

He's not saying, Ooh, I hope the boogeyman doesn't get me tonight.

Good thing.

They are watching out for me.

They are guarding me, but it does mean to look out for, to watch over, to protect our side of the relationship that we have with him.

He has all power and authority.

He has never been under threat.

There's not a problem that God cannot handle, but we get to protect the, our side of the relationship.

We have to make sure that nothing gets between us.

And one of the best examples of that, that I can give you maybe two, uh, maybe you have a relationship, a friendship with the, the CEO or the owner of the company that you work for.

Now, if you are the friend of someone who's a CEO or owner of a company that you do not work for, then you're just friends.

They happen to do that.

You do your thing.

But when you happen to be in the downline relationship with somebody that you're also friends with, you have to guard that relationship.

The relationship may put you in places.

And in moments, when you're going to hear things that not everybody gets to hear, you're going to learn kind of maybe where the company is going and where the CEO or owner is thinking about taking stuff.

You may be, you get some inside information about what's really going on behind the scenes.

You, you might hear about some problems that are going on or some really big wins that are upcoming.

You, you can hear all kinds of things, but here's what you can't do.

If you're going to guard the relationship, you can't tell everybody everything that you've heard.

You can't share everything that you know, you, you can't go out there.

And when you hear somebody on the production floor saying, well, I hear this, this, and this will actually know Bob and I were in having lunch the other day.

And he shared the following things.

You don't get to say those things.

You're guarding the relationship.

And, and when somebody says, Hey, I wish I could just give him a piece of my mind.

You, you don't give them your CEO slash owner's cell phone number.

Well, here's her number then?

No, you don't do that.

You guard that you protect it.

And when somebody is coming after them, when somebody is saying bad things about them, you need to be the one that says, Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on.

I know them.

And while you, and I may not agree with every decision that's made, let's understand they're doing the best they can with the information that they have.

We may not always agree on everything, but, and so we guard that relationship.

We stand up in defense of that relationship because that's my friend.

You guard your relationship with God.

Any relationship with someone in authority must be guarded carefully.

And because your relationship with God matters more than any other relationship that you could ever have.

That must be the one you guard the most.

It's the one that matters the most in our day and age.

Can I just submit to you that it's the one that we need the most to get from here to there.

I need him and I have three thoughts for us today.

Thought number one is guard his name, guard his name.

He says, don't take my name in vain.

Why?

Because names mean something.

So using names, flippantly or without purpose or meaning it's disrespectful.

And when you disrespect, someone's name, you're disrespecting that person.

You said, well, if their name's Bob and there's 73,000, Bob's in this place, then how am I potentially disrespecting that person?

Well, if your name is Bob, it can feel disrespectful.

Number one, or number two, number two, if someone's name is Bob and you're using it poorly, then however it is that you're using it.

You may not mean them, but they're going to feel like you do, but there is only one God, nor how many, no matter how many bobs there may be.

My dad's name is Bob.

So I'm being very particular about the name that I'm using.

Love you, dad, you don't disrespect the name of God because disrespecting his name is disrespecting him and Moses day names had great significance.

In fact, historically reputations were often held in a name.

You just say, I know them.

And suddenly the whole conversation could shift.

They still matter names matter today.

You might say, well, no, they don't matter like that.

Really.

Let me just ask you when you had your last son, was the name Adolf on the list of names.

How about whenever you were expecting your last daughter was Jezza bell on your list of names?

I'm just going to submit probably not.

Is there anything inherently wrong with the name Adolph or the name Joseph Bell?

No, not inherently, but they have a connotation.

They have something that they're bringing to mind of all the people that I've known over my lifetime.

I'd have not known any hate Adolfs and I've only known one Joseph Bell.

It's amazing.

So we say that names don't matter.

But in fact, they do, God had a relationship with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

In fact, he called himself at times, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

He allowed his name to be connected to their names and their names connected to his name.

And he was saying, use my name with respect suck.

Now, now he's building a relationship with an entire nation.

And as he's building this relationship, he knows that some people in that nation, they're going to have a very spiritually focused mine.

And so they might get closer to him than others might.

Some will serve in his temple.

Some will work all kinds of different occupations.

But what he's saying about all of them, no matter where you serve, no matter how you live, no matter what you think, if you're in this nation, treat my name with respect and treat my reputation with respect.

Why is that?

Because God is passionate about you and he wants you to be passionate about him.

And we become passionate about the things that we guard.

We develop an entirely different relationship with things that we guard this stepping stone puts us on the path to passionate relationship with God.

Cause when I say I'm going to guard something, it means that I am willing to sacrifice something of myself in order to protect that thing, that one, that person, that relationship, that calls.

If you say to somebody, Hey, here's something precious to me.

I'm going to give it to you.

And I'm going to ask you to really guard this thing.

And then you stand back and watch.

And what they do is they put that thing.

Whatever that precious thing is, they put it down somewhere and they just kind of walk away.

You're going to get, get a little irritated about that.

If they, if they, uh, standing there on guard and somebody comes up and says, Hey, I want to take that thing.

And they go, yeah, sure, fine by me.

You're going to get a little frustrated about that because when you ask them the guards something and they say, okay, what you're saying is I want you to put yourself on the line for this for me.

And God is saying, I want you to guard the relationship you have with me, and it's gonna cost you something to do.

So you're gonna need to feel the weight and the responsibility of using my name.

And it hit requires constant vigilance.

It requires constant, uh, attention and careful attention.

You can't just walk away from it.

You can't just drop it.

You can't just say, well, it's not convenient for me in this moment.

So I'm not gonna worry about it.

No, it's constantly on your mind.

If you ask me right now, Hey, Micah Sutton, you've been married for 24 years.

What's your wife's name?

And I went, ah, um, uh, um, oh, just give me a minute.

I'll have it to here in a second.

Uh, uh, oh yeah.

It's Christie.

You might go.

Hmm.

I wonder what their relationship's really like.

And if she heard about it, she might go, he's got to sleep sometime tonight.

You see how that rhyme.

It was really good.

Uh, it takes a lot of attention and that's what God desires.

He wants you and I to know his name.

He wants you and I, to be aware of his name, consistently aware of the part he plays and our life.

And we miss this step when we use God's name in frivolous or careless ways, or we allow it to be done.

There's a thing going on in the world right now that I really do not like it involves names.

And it's when people think that somebody is overreaching or being overbearing or just being too much of everything, they say that they're a Karen, which bugs me because my mama's name is Karen.

And when I think of Karen, I think of somebody that's beautiful and wonderful and intelligent.

Somebody who loves me and being a Karen would be an honor for you in your life.

That's how I see it.

So when people say, oh, they're such a Karen, I have a tendency to say, oh, so they're wonderful.

And they're beautiful, loving and kind and gracious, educated.

Brilliant.

And my wife tells me, this is why I have no friends, but, but if you want to have a fight, pick on my mama.

And if you want to have a fight, pick on my wife, and if you want to have a fight, pick on the people that I love, disrespect their name.

And I've got a problem with that because I care about them.

And they're always on my mind.

So when people frivolously use the name, Jesus, or use the name of, or reference God in a way that's frivolous or pointless or unworthy.

People say things.

I swear to God that I won't be late.

Really?

It's going to take divine intervention to get you there on time, or can you just be a good manager of your time and get there here.

Here's what the Bible says.

But above all my brother and do not swear either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath, but let your yes.

Be yes.

And your no, no less.

You fall into judgment.

Now when he says he writes swear there, he doesn't mean swear as in a cussing, as they'd say in Louisiana, he's saying swear, as in make a promise.

He says, if you say you're going to be late, be a big enough person that you're just going to be on time because it's right.

You don't need to stamp that with a higher authority.

Can't you be your own authority over whether or not you're going to be on time for something?

The answer is yes, you can be, keep your word because it's the right thing to do.

You don't need God to seal that deal.

And here's the thing.

The looser you are with the use of God, the less serious you take him, the more you use his name and just throw it out, Willy nilly here and there.

The less you even realize you're doing it.

We miss this step.

When we use God's name as a curse word or allow it.

People will say things like God and never even realize the words have come out of their mouth.

They will say use Jesus Christ and never even know that they said it recently, somebody else talking to somebody and I'm not, I don't feel like I'm the words, cussing police.

Okay.

And so, you know, if I'm talking to somebody and they're swearing, I don't say anything.

If I'm talking to you and you start swearing, I'm not going to say anything.

But then they started using the name of my savior as a curse word.

And I've, I do have a problem with that.

And I did say something.

I said, excuse me, I don't care.

What other words you dropped in this conversation?

That's your business.

But when start talking about my savior, we need to leave that alone.

If we're you and I are going to be good.

I said, okay, I didn't even realize I did it.

I know I was thinking yesterday.

I was thinking, Lord, how's this going to be relevant?

How am I going to preach about using the name of the Lord and swearing and things like that.

And it'd be really relevant to the people that I'm talking to.

And then I watched the OSU game

[inaudible]

And I thought, Lord, I should have preached this last week.

[inaudible]

Somebody asked me last week.

They said, when LSU was losing to USC last week, did you just tell me the truth?

Did you say any, um, any words that were inappropriate?

And my answer is every word I said was very appropriate to the situation you take that however you want to.

I, I actually don't swear.

I didn't grow, grow up in a swearing home, but my point isn't to get on everybody about every single word spoken.

My point is when we're talking about God, let's take it seriously.

Let's respect the name of the Lord.

The more his name is used as a curse, the more it's correlated with negative things, negative thoughts, negative feelings, negative events.

And we really can't curse with his name and worship his name.

At the same time.

We need to pick one or the other.

God says, take my name.

Seriously, take my reputation.

Seriously.

Here's some questions that you can use to figure out how you're doing with this.

Are you more likely to use God's name in moments of negativity or moments of possibility?

Do we say Jesus Christ when something went bad or do we say Jesus Christ help me as things are going forward and I need help in the next step.

Are we saying it in profanity?

Are we saying it in prayer?

Does his name come out of your mouth more often and profanity or prayer?

If his name just becomes a catchphrase, the less you'll think about him as a person.

And he's someone who loves you cares for you, has given himself for you.

And he's just saying respect the relationship that we have enough to not use my name in appropriately.

When you want me to call me, but don't use my name in vain.

We hit this step.

When we reference God with honor and respect.

When we say Jesus, I love you.

When we walk into a situation and say in the name of Jesus, this is going to come out.

Okay?

When we step into a situation, when something happens, we had a medical situation happened in the first service and when it happened, everything turned out.

Okay.

But when it happened, we stopped for a moment and we just said, Jesus, handle this situation.

Jesus, my God deal with this issue, fix this problem and praise God he did.

And so as we're moving, as we're moving along, use his name righteously.

When you hear it being misused, I'm not saying that you got to be a jerk and run around the restaurant and say, I heard what you just said.

You better stop that.

No, but when you're there in an appropriate moment in a PR and in relational conversation, and somebody starts running down your savior, stand up and say something about it.

Amen, father, number two, guard.

The time you spend with God now in the first two steps, we pray.

We highlighted the priorities that God has.

And now he's saying, I want you to prioritize time, time, because remember the whole point is guard your relationship with God.

He says, keep the Sabbath or seventh day.

It's the day of worship.

It's the day of rest.

And he's saying every other nation works seven days to be successful.

But I, your God, I'm going to make you successful in six days now, what's he asking them to do?

He's asking them to trust him enough as their provider to rest on the seventh day, to give that day to him.

And he said, I am going to protect you.

I'm going to provide for you.

It's going to be okay.

But in exchange for all the blessing that I'm bringing into your life, I want you to spend that time with me.

This step puts us on the path to sustained relationship.

If you're not in someone's presence, I don't care how much you love them.

Your relationship cannot go very deep.

But when you're in their presence intentionally in their presence, then your relationship continues to grow and develop.

And it is sustained over the long term.

Our relationship with God's unique though, because it's fought against, by the enemy of our soul, our carnal nature, the, the, the devil satanic demonic forces and the world system.

So everything, everything fights against it.

I can remember back in the day and we pick on sports a lot because sports are just an easy thing to pick on when it comes to this.

Cause I remember the day, whenever nobody played sports on Sunday, that that just never happened.

But today it's really hard to get some days off for some people, if their kids are going to be involved in sports and that, and that's a constant tension, I'm not, I'm not hammering on that right now.

I'm just simply telling you that the stepping stone, it's a difficult thing at times to deal with and to work with it's, it's being pushed against by our world system.

And it requires intentional investment, but it also brings the greatest reward of any other relationship we can have now for the Jewish people.

It was literally 24 hours of rest.

You didn't do anything else.

You worshiped God.

And that was what you did.

That was your whole focus of activity of the day today for believers, the Sabbath is the relationship that we have with Jesus.

So it's not specifically 24 hours.

It is the relationship that we have with him.

It's us being able to say that I know him.

He knows me and being able to rest find rest within the power of the holy spirit operating in our lives.

It means that we're able to have peace when it makes no sense that we have peace, that we have joy when joy shouldn't even seem to be in the vicinity, it means that we can be with comfort.

Even in moments when the human nature would say the world system would say, and certainly demonic forces would say, you should not have any comfort in this moment.

We can have all of that because we have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

It is the rest that we enjoy the relationship with the holy spirit, but it requires intentional engagement.

And we miss this step.

When we put our relationship on autopilot, when we don't intentionally worship intentionally engage, worship includes things like reading.

Scripture includes prayer, which is just communication with God saying, Hey, here I am.

And there you are.

And let's talk right now.

Worshiping includes praise telling God how beautiful and how wonderful he is.

Singing songs to him and about him.

Here's a worship key for you.

A worship key.

Let the re the reality, the wonder and presence of God move you spiritually, emotionally, and physically let it move you.

The relationship you have with him, the, his, when you're in his presence, let it stir something in you spiritually.

Let it stir something in you emotionally, let it stir something in you physically.

And I know that we come from different backgrounds and in church and different methodologies of expressing things.

But, you know, it's interesting that people come from different backgrounds in church and different backgrounds of expressing things.

But at the football game, they lose their ever loving minds.

And at church

[inaudible]

Football is a game.

We say, God is our everything, but when we're in the presence of the pig skin, And when we're in the presence of the holy one, Pastor Benton next week, we'll have all far more seats available than we do this week in the service.

We say, well, I'm just not anymore.

We are emotional.

It's just about what are we emotional?

Every one of us is emotional.

We ha we, we express it in different ways.

And I'm also not telling I'm not prescribing that the V way to express your, your love for Christ is the following actions.

I'm just simply say, if you lose your mind over here and don't move at all over there, something's off.

And I encourage you to check it out.

Let the reality wonder and presence of God move you spiritually, move you emotionally move you physically.

You say, well, I'm moved emotionally.

I'm just not doing anything.

Physically try that with your spouse for a while and see how it works out for you.

That is really good preaching.

Pastor Micah, I'm taking really good notes.

Okay?

The Bible says, encourage yourself in the Lord.

That's what I'm doing right there.

Now we do this together as a church corporately, but it's a daily need in our private devotion.

And what's happening is our desire to be around the one we love is moving us.

It's causing us to act in certain ways, plan in certain ways, pursue them in certain ways.

And then you rest in the moment enjoying their presence.

When Christie and I were dating, I would work 80 hours a week and I would get home late at night and, and I would call her on the phone and she would, I would talk and she would talk.

She would wake up in order to talk to me.

And when she'd wake up, I always hope she'd wake up.

Cause if she didn't, her momma would wake up and answer the phone.

There was no cell phones.

I just called the house phone.

And so she'd wake up and she'd be on the phone and, and I'd be on the phone.

I usually lay on the couch in my living room.

Cause the cord that attached to the wall, didn't reach all the way to my room.

So I'd lay in the living room there on the couch and, and I would talk to her and she would talk to her and we would fall asleep today.

We're not on the phone, but I still fall asleep while she's talking.

[inaudible]

This is the right time to say, Jesus blessing.

Jesus help him.

Lord.

That's the appropriate use?

Yeah.

I just wanted to be in her presence.

And even if I couldn't be in her physical presence, when we were dating, I wanted to have her presence somewhere.

There I've been over the years in different countries.

And before FaceTime we'd be on the phone.

And then I would go all over the place with my computer, trying to get a good enough signal to be able to FaceTime or Skype or whatever we could do.

Just I like being in her presence.

And when it's God, just sometimes being in his presence, we hit the step.

When we intentionally enter his presence and allow his love grace, peace, strength, joy to manifest in our life.

And that's the believer Sabbath.

And you might say, well, wait a minute.

I don't really have time for that.

I need seven days in order to get it all done.

I can't be successful if I don't work all seven days.

Can I just ask you how's that work for Chick-fil-A Not only are they closed on Sunday, but they're also the most successful fast food franchise in our country.

And it's not really that close per store.

It might even be profitable for your life to say, this is the day for the Lord thought.

Number three, build your level of intimacy with God.

Intimacy.

Intimacy is a weird thing in the world today and years ago, I heard this really corny, but very true phrase used to describe intimacy.

And it was the person said intimacy into me scene.

And I thought that is ridiculous.

I didn't say it because I respected the person that was telling me that.

But it's like, that is ridiculous.

That's for somebody who can't read a dictionary, come on, but as I've pastored longer, but frankly, as I've lived longer, what I realized is the, the real, the real issue with this thing called intimacy is that I don't, we don't want anybody to see into us.

And that's why it's true.

I don't want to reveal all my faults.

My hurts my issues, my problems.

I don't even want to reveal all my hopes and my dreams and my passions and my desires.

So God says, I want you to be intimate with me and I want to be intimate with you.

Reveal yourself to me.

I'll reveal myself to you.

And the world has shifted the idea of intimacy, what it really means to really being about sexuality.

And it says, if you're going to be intimate, even for me to say, be intimate with something, what we immediately, because of culture, what most people think is be sexual with be, be open physically with.

And it's led to a real problem in our culture, in our society.

On one hand, we tell our women, we tell our young ladies, we, we tell them, Hey, you know, you're powerful, you're smart.

You're brilliant.

But what they see over and over and over is when somebody takes off their clothes, they're called courageous and brave.

You know, you can be courageous and brave with your clothes on.

I'm just putting that out there.

But what the world says is if you're going to be intimate, you also have to be naked.

So if I'm going to be vulnerable with you, it means I have to be open to you at me.

And ultimately it comes down to sexuality to the point where sexuality has become a driving force in people's lives.

In fact, it becomes the defining factor of their life.

They define some people define their whole life based upon their sexuality.

Now don't get me wrong.

Sexuality is important, but it is not the defining factor of one's life.

And so sexual intimacy, which is supposed to be the natural outcropping Of spiritual intimacy, emotional intimacy, instead it becomes the primary mode of intimacy.

And what you find is that you have people who are having sex together, who cannot share the deep, the deep hopes and dreams of their life.

Literally had somebody say to me, oh, we're having sex, but we're not that close.

[inaudible]

God says, I want you to be intimate with me.

And I want to be intimate with you, ladies and gentlemen, young ladies that are hearing my voice older ladies who are hearing my voice.

You are fearfully and wonderfully made.

You are a beautiful creation of God.

That's who you are.

And you are that way as a modest woman of God, you are that way.

No matter how you look, no matter what you're wearing, that's who you are.

You are not any less or more courageous, depending on how much many clothes you have on or what you expose of yourself and young ladies.

If men seem to pay more attention to you, when you take off your clothes, that is because they are hormonally charged.

It is not because they have really great respect for your mind, your brain, your hopes, and your dreams for the, for your life.

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Put clothes on and find out if they still think you're brilliant.

And if they do, they might be worth talking to.

And if they don't drop them like a hot rock and move on, amen, I get stirred up about that.

Intimacy with God means opening your heart to him, completely sharing your hopes and dreams.

It might change some of your relationship with God today.

If you started doing this every morning and get up in the morning, get a cup of coffee or whatever you do in the mornings, sit down at your dinner table or your breakfast table or your bar or wherever you're at and act like God is sitting in the chair right across from you.

And just open your mouth and start talking to him, sharing your hopes, your fears, your dreams, talking to him about your calendar through the day.

You're going to find absolutely fine that your, your relationship with him begins to grow, begins to deepen.

You're going to discover that your relationship with God is going to get stronger.

These stepping stones build our intimacy with God.

And with those we love.

In fact, they teach us how to treat those, that we want to be close to guard your spouse, guard, your friend, guard, your family member, guard their names guard.

The time that you spend with them and do that with God.

And you will absolutely discover that you cannot help, but have a growing deepening relationship with your savior.

That's our stepping stone.

It takes us to a predetermined location.

Would you bow your heads with me really quick father in the name of Jesus.

I thank you for your people.

You've given us your word that leads us down a very true path.

I'm asking you savior that you would give us grace and give us peace.

I pray you give us the courage to let our feet land in the space that you've designed for us, our heart, to sit there and let us meditate upon your words.

Let our minds be focused in the direction that you've laid out for us.

Oh, we love you mighty God.

And we thank you for your grace and your mercy.

We thank you that in your grace and mercy, you've laid out these stones for us so that we can go from the faraway place we were to the place that's right by your side, that we reflect our father in the world around us.

I thank you for your people.

I thank you for your grace and I thank you for these stepping stones today in Jesus name, we pray and let everybody say amen.